Motor rehabilitation
Background
Annually, 12.2 million people worldwide suffer from stroke. The total number of people currently living with the consequences of a stroke is estimated to be around 80 million. They experience a reduced ability for self-care and participation in social activities. Limitations in the upper limb often lead to difficulties in reaching, grasping, and manipulating objects. Consequently, a decrease in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) tasks and a reduction in Quality of Life are observed.
In the pursuit of innovative approaches to occupational therapy rehabilitation, the emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) has revolutionized how we approach the rehabilitation of arm and hand functions.
What does it look like?
It allows for personalized exercises tailored to individual needs, offers immediate feedback and insight in performance, provides realistic simulations of daily activities, enhances motivation and engagement through interactive and game-like elements, enables repetition and intensity without monotony and provides flexibility and accessibility for patients to engage in rehabilitation exercises in various locations.
As part of the XRehab project, we co-created use cases with rehabilitation professionals and XR companies. We developed 3 prototypes to demonstrate what VR can offer as tool for the patient and the therapist. All prototypes are connected to an online dashboard for therapists to allow streaming, game settings and data visualization. We wanted to create a controllerfree and innovative environment. For this use case we used the Meta Quest 3 as hardware because of the inside out body tracking and accurate hand tracking.
Prototyping
Since the XRehab use cases are prototypes without MDR certification, these prototypes cannot be used for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. With these prototypes we want to take the user group through the development process and show how such a solution could be built and what results could be visible. There would also need to be proper standardization and validation before this setup could be used clinically.
The first part is the integration of a physical table into the VR environment and a visual representation of the motor capabilities of the upper limb. This includes movement in the horizontal plane (forward and sideways arm motion on a table) and in the vertical plane for the patient (shoulder anteflexion).
The second part involves exercises where the patient needs to push buttons based on the game Simon Says. The buttons are presented within the patient's range of motion (ROM) field. As a therapist you can change the settings of the exercise based on the capabilities of the patient. During the exercise the patient can see his current ROM. When the exercise is over, you can look at the data visualisation in the dashboard.
The third prototype are exercises designed to assess the usability of Quest 2 in arm/hand rehabilitation. This prototype includes three different tasks with varying levels of difficulty and can be utilized for both gross motor and fine motor exercises.
“Visual feedback is crucial in motor learning or relearning motor activities. The principle is to encourage and motivate people with motor limitations or those experiencing fear, pain, etc., to move by providing visual feedback during the execution of a movement.”
— member XRehab